New 9/11 Truth-Related Novel: No Place to Run

In his new thriller, “No Place to Run,” Malibu writer Tom Sawyer lays out the mother of all conspiracies. But this is not new territory for the veteran television writer who plots his narrative like a movie script, scene by scene, into a terrifying tale that grabs the reader from page one and never lets up.

As conspiracy theories go, this one is gripping as much for the way the innocent young protagonists are caught in its web as for the fact that it all could have happened just that way.

Sawyer said, “I absolutely, passionately believe that 9/11 was enabled by forces and interests high up in America-both government and commercial-people who knew it was in work could have prevented it, but decided instead that it offered an excuse for another war. Something upon which our entire economy and incredible prosperity has depended since World War II. Something that, as 2001 neared its end, it was time for once again.”

The story goes something like this: Fugitives Claudia Lawrence, 24, and kid brother Adam, 12, able to trust no one, thrown together in a baggage-heavy relationship, stay barely a step ahead of rogue federal agents determined to kill them as they race across the country, learn the truth about their parents' murders, and decipher the baffling puzzle that exposes a startling conspiracy not reported by the 9/11 Commission.

The character of Adam seems to have been drawn from Sawyer's own attitudes in childhood, which he said “invariably caused me to question authority, to regard it with automatic skepticism or outright contempt.”

Claudia, however, was more of a challenge. “My original concept was to tell the story of two fugitive brothers, but then I asked myself, what if the older one was female? That offered fresher, more dramatic possibilities in terms of her vulnerability and the potential for an edgier more interesting relationship between the two.”

Even the heavy, Vince Garrity, is not one-dimensional. An FBI agent turned bad, he orders his two cohorts to murder, and often pulls the trigger himself, with icy resolve. There's just enough back-story to explain his defection to the dark side and plenty of detail about how the agency works, but nothing slows the pace of the narrative.

Sawyer and I talked on the phone last week from the annual film festival in Eugene, Oregon, where he was teaching a screen and book writing course.

He outlined the entire 9/11 scenario: future hijackers known to be taking flight training, supposedly not monitored; the lack of USAF fighter planes in the Northeast Corridor and anywhere near Washington, DC on that day; and the “confusion” in which long-standing, previously followed protocols about what should happen when airplanes are hijacked or even go off course, were ignored.

“It was clear then, and now, that something was certainly not kosher,” he said. “In the writing trade, we refer to such things as ‘plot conveniences,' devices that, in fiction, are so obvious that they are to be scrupulously avoided.”

He added that with the “highly questionable” collapse of the Twin Towers and the cover-up of Flight 93 having been shot down, there are far too many such “Whoa - just a minute now” red flags.

Sawyer said he finds it difficult to imagine that anyone, on carefully reviewing as he did the events of that day, what led to them and what has followed, could arrive at any other conclusion.

Making that point was his main reason for writing the novel, he said. “It struck me that I might try via popular fiction to reach even a few people who wouldn't normally view things that way. All of us view the world and process what we see, hear and read through our own filters. But I continue to be boggled by how readily-eagerly, really-the public buys into the many lies we're handed.”

Watching that indelible spectacle on 9/11, Sawyer knew he perceived it differently from most people. “I was witnessing the single most dramatic statement of rage in the history of the world and the question it raised was: What does it take to make people that angry? That was quickly followed by my next question: Is anyone in America going to ask the first one?

“The answer was: No.”

His take on the reason for that refusal: “America is the World Capital of Denial. We seem congenitally unable or unwilling to question our own or our government's true motives.”

“Incidentally,” Sawyer added, “The 9/11 Commission Report, which appeared at about the time I was finishing “No Place to Run,” failed to refute any of what my novel posits about the events of that day.”

Tom Sawyer will discuss and sign copies of “No Place to Run” at Diesel, a Bookstore, in Malibu on Oct. 22 at 7 p.m.

I mostly read history but appreciate good fiction too. And I'm choosy about the quality of writing that goes into a novel regardless of plot construction and logical details.

"The Shell Game" was, without doubt, the WORST book I have ever read. That includes that pulp masturbation aid I bought at a Holiday Inn in '73 from out a vending machine (which, up until "Shell Game" had been the worst book I'd ever read).

Steve Alten browsing through this site, and see that comment (voted up even). The man tried to do his best to help this cause in the best way that he could. To call his book a POS is disrespectful on so many levels.

Edit: I wonder how many people that have voted the above comment up have actually done anything to further this cause other than signing up to 911blogger.com to be able to vote up the bs, vote down the good comments, and promote nonsense. We've already had one instance of someone from one of the bogus 9/11 sites signing up just to start trouble. I wonder how many more there are.

Do these people deserve to know how and why their loved ones were murdered? Do we deserve to know how and why 9/11 happened?

It reminds me of how the Scientologists would buy up all of L. Ron Hubbard bent science-fiction just to show that he's a bestselling author. This whole idea seems the product of some juvenile mind. It would make more sense if Alten were a particularly cogent, persuasive voice for 911 Truth, but he is mediocre at best. So count me in for 911 Truth - count me out on "Weak Of Truth" and supporting Alten's badly written book."

The same person who accused me of being "sayanim?" He has no credibility. Referencing my own person psyop doesn't give you any credibility either. Which user of that site are you? We already had Keenan (Eleuseus).

Do these people deserve to know how and why their loved ones were murdered? Do we deserve to know how and why 9/11 happened?

"as a top 9/11 truth leader I attract all kinds of attacks--goes with the territory" - Jon Gold

Humility is a sign of true leadership. Even Richard Gage AIA does not proclaim himself as a "9/11 truth leader", much less as "a top 9/11 truth leader". He just does what his heart insists he do. Leadership is a quality that others see in his actions, and in his integrity, sincerity, and humility. The same goes for Daniel Sunjata, Luke Rudkowski and the vast majority of WeAreChange members and the general 9-11 Truth Movement community.

...but I always seem to compare contemporary authors to the old prose stylists like Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene or Steinbeck. I thought Gabriel Garcia Marquez was an enormous talent. One well-written novel I really enjoyed was John Nichols' "The Milagro Beanfield War" (actually this was a trilogy) but he didn't write much of anything else. I read "Atonement" by Ian McKewn before it was a movie. He's a great writer. I'll second John Le Carre as a great writer. I am by no means an expert on prose style and story construction, but those authors are true artists.

The only reason I bought and read "The Shell Game" was because it dealt with 911 and was hyped so much here on 911blogger. Steve Alten just USED the 911 Truth Movement to try to sell his crappy POS. His novel was an abysmal work on every level - style, plot... everything. Nothing redeemable about it (except the cover art ).

I wrote this about it over at Dissident Voice:

----------------------------------------------------------------

I’m fascinated and well-read in 911 Truth and Peak Oil subjects both, but ‘The Shell Game’ is nothing more than a shoddy, thrown-together pulp. It is instantly forgettable. The tone of the writing is very low-calibre. The essential ideas involved in 911 Truth and Peak Oil are not explored well at all. The novel completely fails to warn, educate or prompt the reader’s deeper reflection.
In comparison to well-crafted literature, Alten’s plot and style are little more than script-jottings for a second-rate TV show proposal.

Each “chapter” is no more than about 2-3 pages. Short as they are, chapters are even further broken up into widely seperated scenes of a few short sentences, each one irritatingly written in the present tense (the constant one-dimensional drone of present tense is what makes this pulp read like a template for a cheap TV show). A fragmented, jumbled story-style actually works in literature when each of the segments has enough crafted personality to survive for more than a few milliseconds in the reader’s mind. When crafted properly, the reader is able to slowly piece together the fragments like a puzzle being solved – until the denouement when suddenly everything becomes clear. However, Alten abuses this writing style to extremes. He doesn’t even bother to create a puzzle, instead he produces a kaleidoscopic shattering of broken story shards that fails to live up to its promise as a “window” through which readers may examine the murk of our mysterious recent political history. The fractured style of the novel itself creates a horribly crippled narrative that buries any hope for clearer perception of the deep politics behind 911. I surmise that Alten employed this fragmented style in order to hide his inability to create a sense of authenticity.

“The Shell Game” is touted as a “political thriller” but the novel does not possess any political intelligence – nor wit, nor any superior background knowledge of how the real military industrial complex works, nor of how a shadow government MIGHT have conceivably conducted a false-flag psyop on American soil.

But, you know what? The book DOES have excellent cover art. The picture on the cover with the words “The Shell Game” emblazoned over it, is about the most politically intelligent thing in (or on) the novel. One doesn’t need to crack it open to learn much more than what the graphic designer accomplished. Alten merely pastes several well-known 911-related quotes at the head of each fragmented 2-page "chapter". The meager chapter content to follow has nothing much to do with the quotations. I guess the use of 911-related quotations is supposed to qualify the book as some sort of "political" work. Lame!

Let’s look at one of “The Shell Game’s” fragments. At one point, the protagonist, Ace Futrell, takes a plane to Riyadh, SA in order to enter a large bank. He plans to surreptiously insert a CD-ROM containing Promis software into an ordinary desk computer found on the the bank’s main customer service floor. This Promis software on the CD-ROM will infiltrate the bank’s money centers around the world (and those of other banks too), stealing billions (even trillions) of dollars (from only the bad guys’ accounts, of course) for the express purpose of funding clean energy alternatives to fossil fuels thereby defeating the evil US political establishment, American oil cartels and other bad actors. This is the kind of plot one might find in a cartoon! Especially since none of the prior story dealt with Ace’s ability to program the Promis software to do what he desired it to do.

When Ace gets into the bank in Riyadh, he is greeted by a Saudi bank manager who queries Ace about his business objectives in the country. Ace says that he is engaged ina $2 billion/yr sports memorabilia business and produces one of his company’s latest products – a piece of gum “that will give you the freshest breath in the bank”. He urges the bank manager to try a piece.
“Al-Kuwaiz unwraps it. Hesitates, then pops the yellow rectangle into his mouth. The gum is laced with Burrundanga, a soluble powder better known in Columbia as Zombie Dust. Made from the Borrachera plant, Burrundanga has been called the world’s most dangerous drug as it leaves its victims in a virtual coma, preventing the brain from recording any and all memory until it wears off hours later.”

Make no mistake, there had been no previous reference to Burrundanga poison or Ace’s ability to obtain such a substance or incorporate it into a piece of gum! Ace is just somehow able to produce it right there in the story! It’s like Looney Toons cartoons, where Dawg has the uncanny ability to suddenly produce a shotgun from behind his back to blast ol’ Foghorn Leghorn’s face off, spinning his beak around his head. This is just one bloody awful example of bad story construction in Alten’s trashy novel.

“Ace removes the CD-ROM from the John Lennon’s Greatest Hits case, along with the Yankee’s yearbook. Sliding his chair next to Al-Kuwaiz, he feigns reading the yearbook to the comatose manager as his eyes dart to the monitor. Casually, he leans under the desk, opening the computer hard drive’s CD tray. He quickly positions the CD-ROM containing the Promis worm inside, then closes the drawer.

A command pops up in Arabic, Using the mouse, he double-clicks on the prompter, his heart pounding as the timer bar pops up, signalling that the worm is downloading. Ace checks his watch: 10:38 a.m. Referring again to the yearbook as if it is the Koran, Ace pretends to point out passages to his Saudi Arabian zombie, silently urging the downloading bar to move faster––unaware that above his head, mounted in the ceiling behind a mirrored decoration, the bank’s security camera is recording everything.”

Later in the story, billions of dollars start disappearing from villainous huge bank accounts all over the world because of the Promis worm that Ace loaded onto the bank manager’s desktop PC – to benefit clean energy industries, notably E85 corn ethanol! One thing is for sure: with authors like Alten around, we’ll never run short of corn! and we all know how bloody awful a solution E85 corn ethanol is to our energy problems! How very thoughtful of Alten to pull that already-proven-worthless solution out of his ass for us.

Sorry 911 Truthers, “The Shell Game” is a worthless book, useless to your cause. It most probably is just Alten's scheme to sell his wretched scribblings to a growing body of earnest truth-seekers. Alten merely hopes you'll buy it because of its supposed subject matter. Maybe someday a more inspired writer will step up and produce a more worthy piece of historically-based fiction that explores the genuinely interesting and ominous piece of history we have been living through since the year 2000.

Before reading it, I wrote an email to George Kenney of ElectricPolitics.com suggesting that he contact Steve Alten to do an interview. Kenney has done programs covering both 911 and Peak Oil in the past. However, Kenney wrote back saying essentially the same thing – that he had bought a copy of “The Shell Game” and found the writing style “not his cup of tea”. So I hardly think that I am alone in my criticism.

Back in the days when I bought into the mainstream "western" version of the cold war, I used to enjoy John Le Carre's cynical not-quite-approving version of it. After the USSR went down the tubes he changed over to focusing on the dark side of the west and the US in particular. Any of his later novels, pretty well written in my opinion, are enjoyable and interesting.

I just re-read Mark Lane's "Plausible Denial", which is available in many libraries -- a really good true story of lawyer Mark Lane's defense of Liberty Lobby, sued by E Howard Hunt for publishing an article claiming he was present in Dallas when JFK was assassinated. That book, and Jim Garrison's "On the Trail of the Assassins", also good and also at the library, form my main education of who killed JFK.

read Anatoliy Golitsyn's "New Lies for Old" and "The Perestroika Deception" (see link immediately below) on the "collapse" of the USSR. Until one reads those books, one is in the dark on the Soviet Union.

The "Western" version of the Cold War certainly was a lie, but not the type of lie you're intimating.

By the way, do you believe the current "Western" version of what is going on in the "former" USSR? Do you believe the "official" government version of 9/11? Other than the USSR, when in history has a government simply thrown in the towel and disparage its philosophy?

Why do you think NORAD and NATO weren't disbanded in 1992? Why do Russian bombers still buzz us in the ADIZ? Why was the United States trying to place a missile defense shield in Poland/Czech Republic, the reason given being to protect us from Iran! Why would the Russian electorate elect a "former" KGB officer as their President, and before Putin elect another "former" communist as President?

Also rent/buy the PBS drama Reilly: Ace of Spies (http://www.amazon.com/Reilly-Ace-Spies-Sam-Neill/dp/B000742FZW/ref=sr_1_...).
It's a true story of MI6 suspecting that the Trust (an unofficial assembly set up by the Cheka to fool the West into believing that the Bolsheviks were in such turmoil that they weren't in control of Russia; that the Trust was the only body in Russia that could get things done, and therefore the West should support the Trust. The Cheka called this deceptive program Operation Trust.) was a front being used by the Bolsheviks to fool the West and White Russians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_Operation).

One last troubling fact: Why is it that Anatoliy Goitsyn is the only defector from the Soviet intelligence community who hasn't been seen on television or doing the lecture circuit since the "collapse" of the Soviet Union in December 1991? Golitsyn was the only defector who forewarned the West about the Soviet Union's long-term strategic deception program, correctly prognosticating the rise of dissident movements behind the Iron Curtain (as if that would be allowed to happen in a totalitarian society!), Perestroika, etc.

Golitsyn was so accurate (Golitsyn's description of controlled democratization and liberalization in Russia was so close to the actual events, which occurred from late 1989 through 1991, that researcher Mark Riebling, author of "Wedge: The Secret War Between the FBI and CIA," credited Golitsyn with 94 percent accuracy. Since that time Golitsyn's accuracy has increased further. His prediction that Russia and China would unite into "one clenched fist" at the end of the final phase of the long-range strategy has come true. Now Golitsyn has proved correct in 140 out of 145 predictions.) that on page 229 of Golitsyn's book, "The Perestroika Deception," Golitsyn predicts how a war in Chechnya would be used by Kremlin strategists to accomplish a leadership change. Golitsyn writes of "the military/nationalist option as the third course upon which the Kremlin strategists might embark in (the) future to adjust the style and leadership of a new government if, for example, Yeltsin was considered to have exhausted his usefulness in extracting concessions from the West." Now Golitsyn wrote this on February 1, 1995, under the sub-heading, "The Kremlin's Objectives and the Chechnya Crisis." Let's fast forward and see what happened......

Well, in a series of military mobilizations under the cover of the crisis in Dagestan and Chechnya, at the outset of this crisis Yeltsin appointed a new prime minister in 1999 -- Vladimir Putin, chief of the Russian secret police. The war in Chechnya would be Yeltsin's downfall, and Putin became President in 2000. Golitsyn was right on target. Incredible!

I'd like to see a narrative constructed which, without mentioning 9/11, presents a fictional world in which a group of conspirators are presented while only reveling their motives and the details of their workings, their plan not being exposed until it actually takes place. That plan of course being a false flag operation which is an unmistakable facsimile of the 9/11 attacks. Then the story would go on to demonstrate how the public at large could be duped into chasing after patsies while the real conspirators rake in profits for nearly a decade before a happy ending of the population pulling the wool from their collective eyes and organising a peaceful revolution.

I'd do it myself, but creative writing has never been one of my strengths. I suspect such a story could be helpful to the many who are blinded by some perceived completeness of the official conspiracy theory, and hence refuse to acknowledge anything which would force them to reconsider their faith in it. I constantly run into such people who, for example, dismiss WTC7's free fall by pointing out the lack of any explanation of how it actually was rigged to come down, and all sorts of nonsense one can't rightly be expected to know. If such people were presented with full narrative to provide plausible answers to all those many questions, I'm guessing that would shake some out of their stupors.

I could outline all the necessary plot elements myself, and even have a few twists I doubt many have thought of. For instance, how many here have considered the possibility that many of the people on the flights (Raytheon and government employees and the like) were unwitting accomplices to the conspiracy who were tricked into becoming victims of it to insure they could not talk? Regardless, I'd still need a skilled author to construct a compelling story around such details, and am at a loss as to who would be both willing and able to accomplish such a task. I suppose I'll have to check out Tom Sawyer's work to see if he could be the man for the job.

I have written 100 pages or so but I have developed writers block because I am not quite happy with what I have written - primarily the motive for the crime (robbery). If I can figure that out, then I might be able to progress. I intend to incorporate factual elements from 9/11 evidence.

Last year Amazon had a program where you could publish your own book with them, no matter what the content (within reason i assume) and they would print each book as it is sold, so less risk on their part and yours. I don't know if they still have that program. Check into it.

...would be to start with Paul Thompson's 911 Timeline. Then trace out the broad outlines of several different story lines from factual events that interleave one another. It would be a Herculean task, but authors never fail to impress me with their abilities.

I think one of the main problems in writing a work like this is in getting a publisher.

“I was witnessing the single most dramatic statement of rage in the history of the world and the question it raised was: What does it take to make people that angry? ..."

Whose rage? Who's angry? The "terrorists"?

On 9/11, I witnessed a most dramatic act of cruel, calculated criminality. That's not rage, that's cold-blooded, sociopathic cynicism.

The attacks on 9/11 were not "allowed" to happen, they were meticulously planned and expertly executed by people who had the power and authority to shut down US air defences, control the media coverage, dispose of the evidence, forestall an investigation, bribe, intimidate or coerce officials ... and we're not talking al qaeda ...

That wasn't anger, that was calculated cold-blooded murder on an international stage. I like the mention of plot conveniences, it would be interesting and perhaps helpful for waking people up if we devised a list of these conveniences to show skeptics and detractors of the truth movement.

Boy is he right on that one. The American people are so brain washed it is incredible. Thanks to the Media and our so-called education system. You can put in our religious beliefs also. Religion destroys spirituality. By the way when are we going to have an open thread? Have not seen that in a while. Also what kind of software do I need to up load videos when I post? How is it done? Thanks ahead of time.

Personal favorites are Franz Kafka and Albert Camus. I'm no existentialist but I have a great appreciation for the absurd, especially when it comes to politics.

Honorable mention to Orwell and Huxley, but I prefer their non-fiction work. Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" and Huxley's "Brave New World Revisited" are essential reading. Orwell also wrote some wonderful essays; check out "Shooting an Elephant".

Everyone's read The Grapes of Wrath but how many have read Steinbeck's "In Dubious Battle"? Story includes agent provocateurs in a union battle.

William Burroughs (Naked Lunch) and Henry Miller wrote a ton of brilliant anti-establishment stuff.

Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo is possibly the greatest anti-war novel.

B. Traven (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) is a particular favorite. He is best known for his movie scripts but he wrote a bunch of great novels (eg The White Rose - about oil corporations and peasants in Mexico). He was also a revolutionary in real life.

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin is one of the more interesting utopian novels. Less interesting is Huxley's Island but well worth reading. Harlan Ellison (A Boy and his Dog) has lots of great dystopian stuff. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Jack London's Iron Heel are biting attacks against capitalism.

A Poster above mentioned Graham Greene. The 1992 Film adaptation of The Quiet American is quite good but you really have to read Greene's prose to appreciate his work. Quiet American includes a false flag operation in Vietnam.

Another poster mentioned John Le Carre, who is tops when it comes to espionage thrillers. The Constant Gardner is one of his more interesting "serious" works. Conrad's The Secret Agent is compelling.

A lot of children's books are surprisingly subversive. Dr. Seuss' work is one anarchist treatise after another. Yertle the Turtle is my personal favorite.

For cutting edge material I like Don Dellilo (White Noise).

I could go on all day here so I'll leave it at that. Basically any novel of worth will include socio-political issues.

--

In terms of a semi-fictionalized account of 911-as-inside job, I would love to see one but I think it's premature. The reason Stone's JFK worked so well was because it was based on material in which the actions of the various players were already fleshed out. It was known to a substantial degree what happened. We still don't even know whether M. Atta was the real M. Atta.

Thanks, Adam, for the information about "No Place to Run," by Thomas B. Sawyer. After reading the reviews at Amazon.com, I anticipate that this book will spread the word for 9/11 truth in a most impressive manner.